The invention relates generally to a novel manure spreader, more particularly, is directed to a manure spreader including both a slow speed impeller and a high speed spinner positioned to receive a flow of manure from the impeller and to spray the manure outwardly in a desired spray pattern.
Many types of spreaders have been developed by prior workers in the field which are usually employed in and about farms to utilize the fertilizer value of manure from herds of farm animals, for example, diary cattle, in an efficient and economical manner. The prior art manure spreaders have included flair type spreaders which are generally most commonly employed for use with solid manners. Other workers in the art have developed spray type spreaders which employ necessary tanks, hoses and accessory equipment to effectively distribute liquid manures. Such wet type manures usually must first be processed to add sufficient water to permit use with the spray equipment. Both flail type spreaders and spray type spreaders have been generally and widely utilized in the past and both types are quite common. However, certain operating difficulties and inefficiencies have arisen with the presently available spreading equipment due to the nature of the manures available for distribution. For example, spreaders designed for solid application, such as the flail type spreader, cannot readily be employed for use with liquid manures. Such types are particularly designed for use with solid manures and because of this, have limited storage capacity during periods of application. Also, because of the load characteristics inherent when spreading solid type manures, the prior art type of flail type spreader had to be ruggedly constructed and all parts had to be designed to increased strength to handle the solid materials. Despite the increased structural strength capabilities built into the equipment, there has been evidence of considerable wear and breakage, such as bearing wear, chain breakage and mechanical damage to the operating parts due to the nature of the solid manures.
In the case of prior art liquid type spreaders, the presently available prior art types incorporate a tank-like vehicle which is suitable only for use in the application of liquid manures. Accordingly, such spray type spreaders were suitable for use only with waste materials that had previously been pretreated prior to introduction into the tank of the spreader vehicle in order to provide an effluent specifically designed for use with the specific spreader. So far as is known, except for the composite manure spreaders recently previously designed by the present applicant, and fully described in copending application Ser. No. 170,034 titled MANURE SPREADERS filed July 18, 1980, no other presently available equipment is known which is capable of disbursing either liquid or semi-liquid type manures or combinations thereof in a single apparatus.